:: THE MAP LOVERS ::

I took a visit to our Special Collections Library at my university here I picked out a handful of publications that I found particularly inspiring. Both Grapefruit by Yoko Ono and Double Game by Sophie Calle caught my attention quickly. I wanted to produce something that was inspired by these two great artists

In Ono’s book she presents various abstract theories and concepts around the creation of art. I selected a piece called Map, in which the reader is told to create their own imaginary map and follow it, at the end of which they should give flowers to a stranger. In Double Game, the character Maria follows a stranger around a city, and finds that words are being spelt out to her by the locations that she is visiting. I wanted to explore these ideas and try to create my own map based project set in Manchester.

To explore this concept I decided to create another blog site entitled Map Lovers (check my profile). On it I detailed my own emotional map of Manchester, which uses four street names in a roughly diamond shaped formation, the initial letters of which spell the word ‘love’. I visited the four streets taking photographs of the things I saw, and at the final street stopped someone and gave them some flowers, along with an envelope of instructions detailing how they could access and use the blog to create their own emotional map of the city.

I turned the photographs that were taken on my excursion into a concertina book chronicling the start of the map lovers project, and have kept the blog site running in the hope that it will develop organically into a living, breathing map of the city I live in.

Quite pleased with the way the book turned out.

:: INTERPRETATION ::

A group project with a tight timeframe, we were required within our teams to each pitch an interpretive idea to a panel, who then decided and told us which one to collectively proceed with.

Our chosen ‘filter’ was the cinematic work of Busby Berkeley, who uses complex dance choreography, unusual camera angles, symmetry and abstract shapes to create his artistic films, which often carry some kind of emotional resonance. created was an animated poem which sought to reflect these aspects of Berkeley’s work whilst giving it a twist to represent our given theme, we were given a theme.. quote “Go to Where the Silence is and Say Something” by journalist Amy Goodman.

:: A IS NOT FOR APPLE ::

For this brief we were given a lot of creative freedom, and asked to think laterally, rather than literally. The idea behind the project was to use our summer holiday experiences as inspiration and create an alphabet themed piece which in some way related to what we had done and seen.

I decided to base my piece on record collecting and disco music as these are twin passions of mine and take up a lot of my time! My sketches were at first fairly abstract, wit a view towards creating my own font. The circular designs I eventually settled on are representative of vinyl records and the sound carrying grooves on them. Also shown here s some of my sketchbook work that led to my final piece.

:: THE HALF ::

This month I visted the Lowry in Manchester to document the exhibition that tied into our current project. The exhibition featured portraits taken over 20 years by Simon Annand, and showed me an insight into the lives of actors that would otherwise be very personal and private affair. Each photo was taken as the actor spends there time in their West End dressing rooms, preparing to go on stage during 'The Half' - the last half-hour before curtain-up.
I don't own these images and urge you to visit the exhibition. You can visit Simon's website here and purchase a copy of his book.

:: WELCOME TO HEAVY DESIRE ::

Hey there, and welcome to my sparkly new blog. Here I hope to keep you informed of my creative creations and if you're very good, I may even treat you to other works by some of the best out there. I'm currently studying in Manchester in the subject of Design & Art Direction. Here's hoping you like the blog and please feel free to make comments. Enjoy!